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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Speak Shenzhen -> 
Lesotho: the kingdom in the sky
    2018-08-13  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

James Baquet

The Kingdom of Lesotho’s location is quite easy to describe: It has only one border, with the Republic of South Africa, which completely surrounds it. This makes Lesotho not just landlocked, but “enclaved.”

Looking back over a century and a half, we find that the southern part of modern South Africa was in British hands and was called “the Cape Colony” (after the Cape of Good Hope, where Cape Town is located). The northern portions of today’s South Africa were the Boer Republics, which with the Cape Colony became the Union of South Africa in 1910, predecessor to the Republic of South Africa.

But the Crown Colony was not able to control the fiercely independent-minded people of what was then called Basutoland, and it became a separate British Crown Colony in 1884. It was renamed Lesotho when it gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966.

The official languages are English (as one might expect) and Sesotho, a Bantu language. In fact, “Lesotho” means “the place of the people who speak Sesotho.” The population is 99.7 percent Basotho, the Sesotho speakers. The other 0.3 percent are almost entirely other African peoples. Some 95 percent of the people are Christians.

Lesotho today is a constitutional monarchy. The king’s duties are largely ceremonial, and an elected prime minister conducts the government. A poor but developing country, Lesotho has been hit hard by the AIDS epidemic, with HIV infecting nearly a quarter of the population. With high unemployment, weak currency, and an economic collapse spurred by the global crisis of 2008, some factions in 2010 called for economic integration with (but not political annexation by) South Africa. Their petition was rebuffed.

Lesotho’s lowest point is 1,400 meters, which is the highest low point in the world; no other country lies entirely above 1,000 meters, not even in the Himalayas. Over 80 percent of Lesotho lies above 1,800 meters, and its average elevation is 2,161 meters, the sixth-highest average in the world. All of this is the source of Lesotho’s nickname, the “Kingdom in the Sky.”

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. formal, without real power

2. absorption into another country

3. distance above sea level

4. formal request

5. motivated, caused

6. one who came before

7. widespread outbreak of disease

8. creation of a cooperative arrangement

9. rejected, not approved

10. surrounded by another state or country

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